iCame, iSaw, iConquered and iTraveled

Planning Your Trip Should Include This One Thing

Ok, so the blog posting I did titled “The Hardest Part” is no longer appropriately titled. A lot has happened in the past couple of days, you know the usual trip preparations, visiting with family, checking your lists for the sixth and seventh time. None of that was worth my time or interesting enough for anyone to read but I did learn a lesson the hard way and figured I would share that with you, my apparently bored, inebriated, related or easily entertained reader.

So about a week ago plans changed with our puppy “Tekila.” After further review, we realized that it was going to cost close to $1000 USD, just to Mexico. To fly her from Mexico to where ever we plan on being will be nearly $700 USD, which means we would have spent more money on her tickets than we have spent on her since we got her. So needless to say we figured something else out. I called my sister who lives about 5 hours north of San Antonio in Tyler Texas, and asked her if she could keep Tekila for a couple of months and she agreed. My sweet sister offered to drive down and pick her up but I didn’t want her to go that far out of her way for me so I asked her to meet me halfway in Waco Texas. (The rest of this blog will be a perfect example of how I take a great idea and turn it into a catastrophe.) She agreed again and we set the day for friday after she left her office for the day.

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Now I wouldn’t call me the most sensitive person in the world and if you ask my wife she’d say I’m probably more icy than most. I came up with the brilliant idea to invite my mother because I knew it had been a long time since she saw her last. (My sister is my mothers stepdaughter but the step is just a title) Our family marches to the beat of a different drum so communication isn’t something we excel in. Now whenever I invite my mother it’s almost understood that I have to invite my younger sister. Now I used to point out that this was where the difficulty came in but it actually wasn’t, my younger sister actually wasn’t a pain this time because it was all me. So we all piled up in my wife’s dad’s minivan. Drive nearly three hours to meet my sister halfway, we did leave an hour later than I had wanted and luckily for my my sister was also running behind but not nearly as much as we were.

Once we finally make it to Waco Texas, my sister tells me she found a place to eat, a Mexican restaurant which my wife quickly shot down. She isn’t a fan of what Americans call “Mexican” food, while she acknowledges that it is food, she said it is to bland to be from her country. So when we met up I asked my sister if we could go to another place down the street and she offered to just take Tekila and go if it would be easier for us. I didn’t even have to think twice, my wife and I both were quiet most of the way and I’m almost positive that we both already had tears building up in our eyes. Before we met up, my sister told me she brought her toy poodle “Big” to help ease the strange drive. Well when we got there I introduced Tekila to my sister and her dog and I swear Tekila has ESP because she instantly starting jumping around in her arms wanting to go back to me or my wife she didn’t care who, but not in my sisters arms. This single act of doggy intuition caused the water works to open up for my wife. That’s all it took, once I saw my wife loose her composure, I lost all control. Once I started crying it irritated me so much that I started to rush my sister because I felt like it was freaking out Tekila and my wife so I just told her to leave. What I didn’t take into account was the other people that were there. My mother and sisters got a total of ten minutes to say how much they have missed each other for the past 10 years or so and then I made my sister leave. HOW SELFISH AM I?

As it turned out, not only did I rush my mother and sisters but my wife was really upset with me. She wanted her time to talk to her baby, to explain to her that we weren’t abandoning her but that she was taking a vacation to stay with my sister until we can fly her to where ever we plant our roots. My thinking is that the longer my wife sees her baby fighting to stay with her the harder it was going to be on them both so I made a decision that hurt us all but I felt was the lesser of two evils. What ended up happening could have happened either way and to be honest now that I’m not all emotional about it, I don’t think Tekila has thought about the incident since or at least I hope she hasn’t. When you make choices that seem to hurt your children, there is sometimes a bit of remorse or guilt that lingers afterwards. At this point I have abandoned that emotion, sometimes it is easier to have blind faith in things when you ultimately have no control. Wether or not my dog feels abandoned or not is irrelevant what matters is that she will be taken care of and loved while she’s not with us.

What you need to take into account when planning a trip, move or what ever it is you plan to do, don’t forget the emotions of the people around you and that includes your pets. I love my dog like a child and I got her for my wife to have until we get old together but I didn’t imagine we wouldn’t be taking her with us when we set off to conquer the world. I had no idea how much it would cost to travel with our pet, how much trouble it is or the emotional costs associated with leaving her behind no matter who I left her with. I didn’t think about the emotions my wife or I would go through and I blame that on ignorance. Ignorance and “PPP” (Piss Poor Planning) are usually the culprit in these situations and more often then not they are my usual issues. For some reason I seem compelled to do everything the hard way. That is great for my readers but hell on my wife’s ulcers. I swear if I don’t drive her crazy we’ll live to a 100.

When it comes to your pets emotions, it’s really all about how you perceive them to be, their emotions that is. When it comes to the emotions of your loved ones, then it’s a whole new ball game. People tell you all kinds of things for all kinds of reasons. When emotions are involved people tend to err on the side of caution and give advice ( warranted or not ) that way as well. Remember that and take what people say with a grain of salt. People have all kinds of fears and they tend to tell those fears to anyone who will listen. Look it up people, FEAR may be a four letter word but it’s just a word and you can change what that means for you. I have a new definition for the word fear, unknown. Every person I have ever talked to about fear always listed their fears starting with the ones they have yet to experience. Change your definition and get to know your fears and maybe you’ll realize that there is a lot less to be afraid of than you think.

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About Bevo the Blogger

I am an American living abroad, and by abroad I mean pretty much anywhere that isn't the United States. Not because of some political boycott or legal issues but because this planet is very big and there is more to see than what's in my backyard. I am recently relocated from Egypt to Ecuador where I blog and work on a few online projects that I hope to be nearly as successful as every other aspect of my life.